July is six and a half points up from forty seven bets, which is a steady month and not a July. The one in the book from last year, nearly nineteen points, was the exception, and I said so at the time. I'm fine with steady. It gives me room to write about something that's been on my mind, which is how people decide what trip a horse wants.
The usual way is breeding. The sire got two milers, the dam was a sprinter, so the horse is a seven furlong type. Trainers use it, the papers use it, and there's real science behind it. There's a gene that goes some way to predicting whether a horse is built for speed or stamina, and the breeding companies test for it. I've got no quarrel with any of that.
I just don't use it. I can't. I don't have the test results, and neither does anyone pricing a Tuesday handicap. What I have is the horse's own record. Where it's run, how far, what happened. And here's my view, which you can take or leave. The record shows you where the horse gets the trip without you needing to know why.
So when a horse drops back from a mile and a quarter to a mile, I don't ask what the sire did. I ask whether this horse has won over a mile, and whether the mile and a quarter run, the one with the 7 at the end of the line, looked like a horse that didn't get home. If it has and it did, then the drop in trip isn't a gamble, it's the horse going back to what it's good at, and the market is often still pricing the 7.
The same goes up in trip. A horse stepping up that's been finishing strongly over shorter is doing something its record already hints at. One stepping up because the trainer is running out of ideas is doing something its record says nothing about. I'll have the first and leave the second. Members just see the horse and the reason. The checking is done.
None of this is hidden. It's just that the pedigree is the glamorous answer and the record is the boring one, and the boring one is the one in front of me every morning. July's best bet, a horse at Worcester on the first at 6.2, was that sort. The record said one thing, the last figure said another, and the price believed the figure.
Lee
PS: the four courses I said I'd leave alone have been left alone all month. Nottingham, Hamilton, Fontwell, Fakenham. I miss none of them.
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More from the notebook: Mojito Des Mottes, and the best month in the book · The courses I leave alone